Freedom Of Limits

 "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.” G. K. Chesterton

In part the hope was that the surgery, cutting my back open, would heal the right foot. It had been getting progressively more useless prior to the surgery. There was a slight healing, but a full healing, they said, could take a year…or more. Or never.  For the next day, or year or however long I live God has ordained this limitation of my strength and of my healing. Weak as I was before, there has been some increase of strength. Strong as I could be, it appears a significant weakness will remain in my foot. The human body as designed is bound by weakness. Theologians (h/t David O. Taylor) make the point that Christ Himself came to us in a limited body.

In Atul Gawande’s book; Being Mortal he says that the end is ‘just the accumulated crumbling of one’s body systems.” At one point he asks a well published gerontologist if we have discerned any particular, reproducible pathway to aging. “No,’ he said, ‘We just fall apart.”  

Wrestling with this framework I can see two sides, one depressing and one positive. The downer is that the body will wear out, break down, fall apart. The upside is that In this clay frame, in this finitude there is freedom. A freedom to lean into God, to love one another and to celebrate what we have.

Photo by meriç tuna on Unsplash

Cyanide, Socialism and Freedom

           Photo by Danilo Alvesd on Unsplash

Mom kept a vial of cyanide in her jewelry box. Perhaps it was a powerful reminder of her family’s escape from Latvia. Or she just wasn’t sure what to do with it. Its original purpose was clear; if bartering border crossings with soap and cigarettes went terribly awry---swallow the pill.

As a kid I didn’t understand the backstory. Pieces I never learned. My grandfather, Augusts Mitrevics, his wife Lidija and two children fled the Latvia they knew seeing the Latvia it would become. He was a famous theatre actor. Even has a page on IMDB. 

They erased him. A visitor to Latvia up to 1991 would find no record of my Grandfather. Though he appeared on postcards. Though he was a leading actor. He turned down their offer of summers in Siberia (and springs, and winters…) for the freedom of another country. For that he was shunned.

It’s hard to live with a boot in your neck and a gun in your back. They said that in Latvia, in 1978, as the freedom movement bubbled. When you don’t have freedom, you appreciate it. When its the air you breathe, you take it for granted.

I am next in line in a chain that escaped cyanide and socialism. Seeing life and liberty taken and given away jars me. Governors barring people from working to meet their needs is morally wrong. To tell people where they can go (shop, drive, celebrate) puts people in chains un-American. Yes, one says, ‘but these are only little links for your own good.’ No matter the size of the chain it’s still bondage.

The poison was a reminder. Pilgrimage to a new land. An imperfect place not fully home. A free country. Mom would have fought to keep it that way; grandparents too. The path forward is clear. Don’t swallow the pill. 

Swimming

We swim in an alien atmosphere. I remember early voyages. Passing through a white, steel gate; walking down a narrow corridor you smell it. Chlorine saturated water steams from wet cement. An adult beckons; parents push. The first step into clear blue water; foot feeling the tension as it breaks the surface, then the other.  Oh, the cold!

I’m not comfortable entering a pool.  My asthmatic lungs seize up with quick temperature change. I can barely breathe. I’m leaving the safety of air and firm footing. One step down; bathing suit gets wet and heavy. Two steps down then hold to the side, hold to the side! 

Grasping tight the pool’s edge over there is a pile of rectangles; like tops from Styrofoam ice-boxes. Bright colors; cherry red and cobalt blue with corners cut-off. For what purpose?

Inside the pool a line of children hold to the edge. An adult towers over us in a red bathing suit. “Pretend you’re in a big bathtub.  Face down and blow bubbles.” Easy. Each is given an ice-box cover. Trembling and terror, we leave the side. Grasping kick-boards we shove out across the shallow end a line of stick men without arms.

The new house has a pool. Neighbor girls hurl us into cold water. The sink-or-swim school. Dog paddles stave off drowning. Paddles turn to superior strokes. What was fearful now’s freedom.  Summer days spent swimming til cool water constricts blood vessels. We turn purple.

We swim in an alien atmosphere. The sink-or-swim school. Bright colors bid us leave the shallow end to the scary deep. Perhaps freedom awaits!